McCaffery: Facing a break, the Flyers have not allowed their season to snap

By
Jack McCaffery, Delaware County Daily Times

Thursday, February 6, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — The Flyers were in danger of losing their grip on a season about 10 days ago, and if they were to do so, it would be under the cover of late-night games and the mystery that is the NHL west.

They’d just beaten the Detroit Red Wings at home in a shutout, but even that was their first victory out of four, a five-goal loss in Boston included. Mostly, they had become equal parts sloppy and disjointed, and way too much like the team that began the season with seven losses and two coaches in eight games.

So three games hovered, and taunted, and tantalized — three games that might have snuffed their season, one in Anaheim, one in Los Angeles, one in San Jose.

“We knew it was going to be a tough trip,” Vinny Lecavalier was saying the other day. “That’s how it is when you go to California now. Maybe it wasn’t that way 10 years ago, when Los Angeles or Anaheim might have been in last place or whatever. But now? Now, that is a rough trip.”

One of two things was about to happen during the journey. Either the Flyers would return home demoralized, defeated and splintered, or they would have found a new energy, the kind they would display Thursday against the Colorado Avalanche at the Wells Fargo Center. That, they did, with Steve Mason repelling 38 of 39 shots and Claude Giroux whistling his 19th goal into an empty net to complete a 3-1 victory.

“It was just the little details,” Giroux said. “Winning battles was something that we addressed after the Boston game. And we wanted to make sure we played better as a team, supporting each other. And we are breaking out the puck even easier, so we can have more offense.”

After winning two of three in California, shutting out the Kings and rallying to defeat the Sharks, 5-2, they had the idea they were back.

“We had played good defensively,” Lecavalier said. “But we played well offensively, too. We brought speed. We were physical. In San Jose, we played in their zone and were active, and I think that made a world of difference.”

Suddenly, the Flyers were running four lines effectively, were stable and comfortable on defense and, as it showed again Thursday, were dominant in goal, improving to 29-23-6, and nosing into third place in the Metro.

Stop the season?

Well, conveniently enough …

“I,” Ed Snider volunteered, “hate the Olympics.”

All right, then. So there it was.

The Flyers will entertain Calgary Saturday and then break for two weeks as five of them go to the Olympics, each representing a different nation. If there were a handbook for how to decompose an improving team at the wrong time, that would be on Page 1. At the top.

“We played pretty well, too, earlier,” Giroux said. “Then we had a break, and it was tough to get that back.”

Such is the risk of the NHL committing to a tournament in the middle of its season, implying that there is something at least as worthy of stalking as the Stanley Cup. Some teams are going to appear deflated by the break, while others will return revived.

As for the Flyers, their recent bounce has given them a fresh incentive to use the 23 post-Olympics games to better their postseason positioning, not just their statistics. “I love where we are right now,” Snider said. “I think we are playing extremely well and I am excited about the team. The goaltending is outstanding. The way we are playing, with the system that Craig Berube has instituted, is outstanding. We are going to play a lot of outstanding teams after the Olympic break, in March. But we are home a lot of the time and are playing extremely well as a team. And I have my fingers crossed that we will do a good job.”

That’s where the Flyers were Thursday, days before their unfortunately timed vacation.

That’s where they were, because when they had a chance to go quietly into the West Coast darkness, they did more than just cross their fingers, too.